Some Aspects of Rhythm and Meter in Webern's Opus 27

This essay asks if, and how, we can read the rhythms of Sappho’s poetry as if it could be heard, still. The Sapphic stanza is a poetic form that has gone through a long history of transformations, from a powerful metrical imaginary in Victorian poetics (graphing Sapphic meter as a musical form) into an idealization of “Sapphic rhythm” in twentieth-century prosody (naturalizing the rhythms of speech). By comparing metrical translations of Sapphic fragment 16 (“The Anactoria Poem,” discovered in 1914), the essay proposes “metametrical” reading as a model for critical reflection on the complex dialectic between rhythm and meter. Examples are drawn from Victorian metrical theory and Anglo-American imitations of Sappho by modern and contemporary poets, including Joyce Kilmer, Marion Mills Miller, Rachel Wetzsteon, John Hollander, Jim Powell, Juliana Spahr, and Anne Carson..

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Precedents for a Theory of Projection

Meter as Rhythm ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190886912.003.0008 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 127-136

Author(s):

Christopher Hasty

Keyword(s):

Higher Order ◽

Rhythm And Meter ◽

Time Point

This chapter evaluates the work of two theorists who have discussed in detail the phenomenon of “projection.” Friedrich Neumann's concept of the rhythmic pair differs from this book's account of projection most obviously in its isolation of the pair as an autonomous “whole,” its separation of rhythm and meter, and its invocation of time point for the determination of an event's boundaries. Although Neumann describes the process through which a rhythmic pair might become unified as a “higher order” discrimination, he does not consider the process through which equality is produced and removes projection from meter in order to characterize an exclusively rhythmic order that in many respects resembles Hugo Reimann's dynamic, “organic” model. By contrast, Moritz Hauptmann is concerned with the process whereby determinate duration and equality are created and proposes a theory in which meter, quite apart from rhythm, is regarded as a dynamic, organic phenomenon arising from an innate human disposition for equal measure. The chapter then considers Hauptmann's analysis of the formation of duple meter.

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General Character of the Opposition

Meter as Rhythm ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190886912.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 3-27

Author(s):

Christopher Hasty

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

General Character ◽

Radical Interpretation ◽

Rhythm And Meter ◽

Periodic Repetition

This introductory chapter presents the opposition of rhythm and meter as a contrast of (1) rhythm as variegated pattern and meter as periodic repetition; and (2) rhythmic and metric accent or, more broadly, rhythm as event and meter as a measurement of the duration of that event. These oppositions are sufficiently commonplace that it has not been necessary to invoke the work of specific theorists except to document the most radical interpretation of metrical accent as durationless. In one form or another, these two interpretations can be found in most current writing on rhythm and meter. Although these interpretations need not be seen as incompatible, there has been a tendency in more systematic treatments to posit one or the other as fundamental. Ultimately, it is in the opposition of meter and rhythm that one encounters most poignantly the opposition of law versus freedom, mechanical versus organic, general versus particular, or constant repetition of the same versus spontaneous creation of the ever new.

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